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Monday, February 20, 2012

TESTING MASLOW

Testing MaslowbyRobert L. Fielding

Swedish Man Found After Being Stuck In His Snow Covered Car For Two Months

2 months – two months – I went out to work one morning in December, 2011 and didn’t get out of my car until yesterday, 19th February 2012 – I was snowed in for 62 days – without food, left to drink the drops of water that dribbled through my window. I had a radio, and a CD player, until the battery went flat on Day 2 - 60 days of silence – no klaxon to tell people where I was, nothing, just me and my car, and my thoughts.

Day 1Stuck here in the freezing whiteout of a drift that enveloped me as I tried to get going in the sliding, skidding snow. Sleep came easily, at first, but my situation got worse very quickly – the car ran out of petrol, leaving me only the battery – a cold night.Waking up at four, pitch blackness – this snow must be a meter over my roof, nothing but blackness, and the cold. Some water still left in the bottle I always carry with me, just in case.Food’s all but gone – the crust of a tuna sandwich all I have until somebody gets here. I wouldn’t have wolfed it down if I’d known this was going to happen. Think before you eat – in future – if I have one! Hope nobody’s too worried about me – phone’s dead – no signal.

Day 2Hunger cuts through me like a knife – thirst gnaws until I catch a drip – worry – that is starting to gnaw too – how are things going on without me? Who am I kidding, probably better than normal – the kids do what their Ma tells them, when she tells them – the guys in the office get on with what they’ve got to get on with, with or without me – the project – that is due to finish any day now – without me!

Day 3I do miss everyone – wonder if I’ll ever see them again – if they’ll ever see me. Nobody is looking, that’s the trouble here. Everybody’s too tired, too warm, too damn smug to come looking for a loser like me – who goes out in this weather without first telling somebody – everybody, that’s who! This is just my luck – you think this is as good as it can be, or you think it can’t get any worse and BAM, here I am stuck in a snowdrift for 72 hours, I really don’t know how much longer I can stick this.

Day 4Sleeping longer and longer, nothing going on, my metabolism’s slowed to nothing – I am in hibernation, like a mouse under a pile of straw, except the mouse got himself prepared first, ate a load of stuff, fattened out and then found a warm, dry place for the winter – like Florida, I guess.This leather doesn’t taste of much, and chewing it as if it did is making my enzymes churn, getting ready for something that never arrives – just this leather. I tried paper, but that just clogs you up, and I don’t need anything to clog me up, can’t afford to defecate, to lose fluid or anything. Brain damage is what I’m in for at this rate. Starting to ramble in the night – night and day – what do I care? I sleep and then I wake, and sleeping and waking bring on their own problems. Delirium in sleep, cramps awake – give me the nightmares any day.

Day 5Now I have really got to get out of here. Shouting didn’t help – all I did was weaken myself – my throat is as dry as parchment – don’t have a drop of saliva to swallow, can’t speak anything past my swollen tongue and my aching teeth.Keep focused on something else out there – Inga and the kids, work, the team at work, the nights out, the better nights in – better not go that way or despair will hit me, but I need warmth, I need love, I need to belong, I need to get out.This isn’t working, dreaming is turning up in waking moments, drifting off to somewhere I’ve never wanted to go, somewhere I know nothing of, but I am finding out about anyway. Me, I’m just a bundle of responses, a bundle of needs, for love and warmth, food and drink, shelter, the need to do something, be somebody, find out what I can do, instead, I’m finding out the trails to darkness, in my bowels, my belly, my ventricles, my brain – bowing to a lack – to need, pure need. I need to be freed from my needs!

Day 6Now this is getting bad. I can’t think straight about anything – food, I think about food - nyponsoppa - warm and tasty, princesstårta, like Mama used to make, varmrökt lax, straight from the lake – STOP STOP STOP – I can’t think of what I haven’t got – that way madness lies. Think of what I have – a good family – good job – good life – money and to enjoy it all, the hea.. that is what I am not going to have if I don’t get this thing right. Concentrate, concentrate – think think, think, or stop thinking, be like the mouse and curl up to sleep through it all until spring comes and someone finds me stiff as a board, but with a glimmer of light and heat at my core – life – my life.

Day 7Nnnnnnnn – to the power of ‘n’! LIFE IS ALL THERE IS LEFT, it seems, after all!